Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Ideas are, in truth, force.

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Ideas

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. Their acquisition obligates each man in some way to change his life, even if it is only his inner life. They demand to be stood for. They dictate where a man must concentrate his vision. They determine his moral and intellectual priorities. They provide him with allies and make him enemies. In short, ideas impose an interest in their ultimate fate which goes far beyond the realm of the merely reasonable.

Decter, Midge

In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off.

Montapert, Alfred A.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

11.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

12.

If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.

Kettering, Charles F.

13.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

14.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

15.

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

16.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

17.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

18.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

19.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

20.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

21.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

22.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

23.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Bacon, Francis

24.

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

25.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

26.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

27.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

29.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

30.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

31.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

32.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

33.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Keynes, John Maynard

34.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

35.

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride by on air. You've only to reach out and snatch one...

Mckeun, Rod

36.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

37.

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

38.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

40.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

41.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

Block, Henry

42.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

43.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

44.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

45.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

46.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

47.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

48.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

49.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

50.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli